


Wild Encounters

by Laily



Series: The IronStrangeFrost Compendium [5]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Domestic Bliss, Established Relationship, Fluff, Humor, IronStrangeFrost, Jotunn Loki (Marvel), Light Angst, Loki is Tony and Stephen's little koala, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Protective Stephen Strange, Romance, Sick Loki (Marvel), Tony babysits Loki for one day and it all goes to
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:06:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28398939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laily/pseuds/Laily
Summary: Tony takes Loki out on a date to the Zoo. I mean, come on. How eventful can it be?
Relationships: Loki/Stephen Strange, Loki/Tony Stark, Loki/Tony Stark/Stephen Strange, Tony Stark/Stephen Strange
Series: The IronStrangeFrost Compendium [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2135610
Comments: 15
Kudos: 159





	Wild Encounters

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kymera219](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kymera219/gifts), [TalesOfMagicAndChaos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TalesOfMagicAndChaos/gifts).



> I've fallen madly in love with this OT3, wish I had more time and brainpower for a proper, full-fleshed fic - this will have to do for now. 
> 
> Caution: contains vomiting, but nothing graphic.

Loki pressed his palm to the protective barrier, his long fingers curling around the mirror image of the fantastic animal reflected in the glass.

“You poor little thing…”

Tony wondered for the hundredth time if he had not committed a dire mistake in bringing Loki here. 

Yep, this is a huge mistake, Tony thought a little too late; Loki’s eyes were already brimming with tears and there was no mistaking the pain in his horrified “Why?” 

“Humans have a knack for committing atrocious cruelty under the guise of charity,” Tony said quietly. 

“Yes…” Loki’s voice trailed off. “I have been a recipient of such charity before.”

“Loki…” he said warningly when Loki’s hand began to glow. 

Tony looked around in mild panic. It would not do to have Loki performing acts of magic in public - no, if Loki pulled a David Copperfield and sent the polar bear back to the Arctic where it belonged, it would go worldwide.

“What are you doing?” Tony hissed, pressing his body closer to shield his lover, specifically his glowing hand, from curious eyes. 

“Hush, Stark.” Loki closed his eyes and concentrated on his spell. 

“It wasn’t cold enough.” He opened eyes as red as blood. “Now it is.”

The temperature had dropped so drastically Tony would have seen his own breath had he not been so transfixed by the sight of Loki’s eyes, now green once more. “Feels icy enough to me.”

“It’s not sea ice, Tony,” Loki said quietly. “The male and female bears meet on sea ice to mate. I have done all I can. By emulating their natural habitat, perhaps now there is a chance for them.“ 

Loki abruptly pulled himself away from the glass and stalked out of the enclosure, his mood so darkened he barely acknowledged the arm Tony had brazenly slung around his waist. 

"You are really something, you know that?” Tony whispered in his ear.

“Something what?” Loki asked, his voice apathetic. 

“Just a saying.” Tony touched their temples together for a brief moment. “Means I think you’re amazing.”

Loki snorted. As flattering as Tony’s words were, he was not easily fooled. “Admit it. You were freaking out.”

“What? No, I wasn’t.”

“Yes, you were. You thought I was going to release all the animals from captivity like some kind of animal rights radical.”

“No, no. Well. Maybe. Just a little bit,” Tony admitted with an embarassed laugh. “It’s just - when I asked you where you wanted to go for our date, the zoo wasn’t the first place that came to mind, that’s all.”

Loki frowned. “Why not?”

Tony found himself at a loss. “Well, it isn’t exactly a romantic place.”

Loki looked around, and began to nod with the realisation. “I see mostly families with small children. This is an important observation. Is that the time when most romances die?”

“No, no, that’s not what I mean at all - ” If Tony was not struggling before, he was certainly struggling now.

“Interesting…” Loki murmured absently and began walking away. 

“Loki, wait up!”

_______________________________

Ever since arriving home from their day out, Tony’s recounting of his adventure with their beloved Loki had not gone off its manic tangent. 

Stephen shifted his thigh slightly to make Loki more comfortable; their lover was still sleeping in his lap with one hand tucked under his cheek. “It’s the first time I’ve seen him look this worn out.”

“He made me walk around the place three times, all seven hundred acres of it,” Tony complained. “I feel like I’m ninety, my legs have gone to shit.”

But for all of Tony’s moaning and groaning, there was a ruddiness to his cheeks Stephen rarely saw outside the setting of one of Tony Stark’s famous bacchanalias. 

“Sounds like you had fun,” Stephen teased in a hushed voice. 

“Well, my dad wasn’t exactly the zoo-going type, so it’s not like I knew what to expect,” Tony said dryly. “It’s a lot like going to a funeral, isn’t it? We go to the elephants, and he says things like ‘Did you know that twenty thousand African elephants are killed each year for their ivory tusks, Tony?’ Or we could be at the Australasian wildlife exhibit, and suddenly he goes, ‘Did you know that sixty thousand koalas were killed in the Australian bushfire last year, Tony?’”

Stephen chuckled. Loki let out a little moan in his catnap at the slight disturbance, prompting Tony to gather the long legs into his lap and begin massaging Loki’s calves lovingly. 

Ever the multi-tasker, he stretched his neck across the couch and gave Stephen a customary kiss. “How was your day? Finished with the report yet?”

“Yeah, written and sent to your boss via encrypted email as per instruction.” 

Tony snorted derisively. “Fury’s not my boss.”

“Whatever he is, he’s important enough that I had had to miss out on such a lovely outing with my boyfriends,” Stephen pouted, and Tony leaned over to kiss him again; he simply could not resist the power of the pout. 

“I’ll make it up to you. Just tell me what you want.”

“I was thinking of watching a movie together but…” Stephen tipped his chin down at the still form curled up between them like a slinky polecat. 

“We can watch one of your Hitchcockian silent films.” Tony mirrored Stephen’s beatific smile. “What’s that one with the serial killer in it? The one who calls himself The Avenger?”

Stephen’s eyes lit up. “The Lodger?”

Tony could suffer all the silent movies in the world if it meant seeing Stephen beam like that again. “Anything you want, sweet cheeks.” 

He carefully lifted Loki’s legs off his lap and rearranged them on the couch. “Why don’t you put it on while I go scrape together some bonne bouche from the kitchen?”

Stephen blew him a kiss. “You’re an angel.”

Tony’s light-hearted footfalls made a happy tune as they pitter-pattered toward the kitchen. Stephen shook his head in the attempt to shake the stupid smile of his face; failing that, he bent over to grope under the coffee table for the remote control he had last seen there. 

The movement must have jarred Loki, who began to stir.

“Strange.”

Stephen grabbed the control with one hand and absently patted Loki’s shoulder with the other to shush him back to sleep. “Shh…”

But being the light sleeper that he was, Loki was unfortunately fully awake now. 

“Stephen,” he called quietly. 

“Hmm?”

A whole minute passed before Stephen realised Loki had yet to convey the grievance he seemed to be nursing, judging by the lines creasing the outer corner of his eye. 

Or Stephen could have missed it entirely; oftentimes he found himself lost in his reading especially if it was the leisurely kind, for it was the hardest to make time for after all. Unconsciously, his fingertips stopped playing with Loki’s hair and fingered the frown instead. “Did you say something?”

“Can you make my stomach stop hurting?”

Stephen frowned. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

“Just a simple case of overindulgence,” Loki sighed, shifting uncomfortably. When that did not work, he climbed his hands up Stephen’s arms and shoulders as he struggled to sit up. “Shit, this hurts.” 

“What did you feed him?” Stephen demanded the moment Tony reappeared, bearing a tray full of nibbles and munchies.

“Umm…” 

He could practically hear the furious turns of Tony’s fantastic brain, even as his partner dropped the food-laden tray to the coffee table with an unceremonious clang and took a seat on Loki’s other side. 

“Exotic meat trimmings rendered in their own fat and flavoured naturally with salt, pepper and garlic, served on a bun with a dash of organic mustard and pimentón?” 

At the blank but furious look on Stephen’s face, Tony made one last ditch effort at being clever, but it came out weak and hella guilty. "I gave him a wiener.”

“You gave him hot dogs?”

“Umm…”

“From a _cart?_ ”

“Jeez, hon, lighten up. It's not like he’s our pet dog and I accidentally gave him chocolate." Tony rubbed soothing circles over Loki’s back, cooing nonsense and pointless reassurances. 

"It's exactly like that! Half the time _we_ can't identify what's in it," Stephen pointed out. "What happened to the sandwiches I made you?"

"Loki fed them to the birds. Said they told him they were hungry."

Stephen stared down at the back of Loki's head. "He what?" It was too bizarre not to be the truth.

"I'm sorry, alright? But seven hundred acres is crazy big and we were getting tired and I knew you packed us lunch but the hot dogs just smelled so good and Loki gave me the eyes and I caved, alright?"

That explained a lot of things...Stephen had himself fallen victim to those bewitching eyes many times before. Still, “Do you know how much preservatives is in that thing?”

“I only bought him one hot dog, Strange. One.”

“One hot dog a day increases your chances of getting colorectal cancer by twenty percent.” Stephen’s voice was beginning to rise in pitch. “Twenty percent!”

“He’s over a thousand years old, if cheap meat products could kill him, don’t you think they would have done so by now?”

Stephen threw his hands up in the air at Tony's brand of logic. “His longevity is not his fault! And besides, in case you didn’t know, Loki is a figure of political importance, Stark. Someone could have slipped poison into his food right under your nose!”

“I had JARVIS canvas the entire park, my algorithm for picking out the safest food vendors in terms of food safety and security against acts of terrorism is _impeccable_.”

Loki hated it when people talked over him, but the more he hunched over from the pain, the closer Tony and Stephen got into each other’s face over his contorted form; if he had the strength, he would have reared his head by now and given both his lovers the most catastrophic nosebleeds in human history. 

“Precious ones, please cease your bickering…” 

He slid off the couch gracefully onto all fours and promptly threw up right then and there on the carpet. 

Loki climbed to his feet slowly and casually walked over to the kitchen sink. “I feel much better already.”

Tony snapped out of his stunned state. “Where do you think you’re going? You’re sick!”

“I am not sick.” Loki gargled the sour taste out of his mouth and spat one last time into the sink. He turned around to face his lovers, eyes glazed over. 

“But on the rare occasion that I do get sick…” Loki held a hand to his waist, looking regal and wan. “My Brother gives surprisingly comforting cuddles.”

Without another word, he disappeared into a geyser of seidr, spiralling upward in a column of green and gold.

“Shit.” Stephen’s hand stopped in the midst of boom-boom-whooshing the puddle of vomit into the ether. He stared at the spot where Loki had been standing not a second ago. 

“Tony, babe, better get packing. We gotta go.”

Tony swallowed hard. “Yeah...Thor knows where we live, doesn’t he?”

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog is a 1927 British silent thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock.


End file.
